Blogg

Her finner du nyheter fra prosjektet. Here you can find our project news.

  • What is belonging and why is it important?
    by Vanessa May What is belonging? Belonging is a sense of ease with oneself and with the surrounding world, often likened to a feeling of being ‘at home’. Many things can contribute to such a sense of ease: we can feel a sense of belonging to a variety of people, places and things. Belonging in …
  • Theorizing Belonging from the perspective of young former refugees
    Tina Mathisen How do young former refugees go about to create place attachment and belonging in a new home place while at the same time maintaining attachments to other home places? And what does the concept of belonging entail theoretically speaking? These were questions I was grappling with during my doctoral research together with youth …
  • On Belonging, Sameness and Difference
    Allison J. Pugh About two decades ago, I spent three years listening to and observing children in elementary school in Oakland, California.  At the time, there was a hue and cry about the commercialization of childhood, and a widespread fear of children’s rising materialism.  But what I found instead was that children most often used consumer goods to connect to others rather than to dominate them.  In fact, children lived in what I came to call an “economy of dignity,” in which particular goods and experiences served as currency, or, to use another metaphor, as passports for their social citizenship.  Children relied on particular goods like electronic games to signal to each other that they were part of the same group – and if they did not possess the goods that mattered, they strived to accumulate knowledge about those goods so they could position themselves as culturally fluent in their local environment.  As I wrote in the book that came out of this research, their ultimate goal, the target of all this deployment of goods and knowledge, was establishing themselves as full citizens in their social world: in other words, their belonging.[1]
  • Children’s engagement with and belonging to their environments.
    Asher Ben-Arieh Recent years have brought focus to the importance of understanding context when approaching the topic of child wellbeing, with both theoretical and empirical evidence mounting to support this movement (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Coulton & Spilsbury, 2014). Whilst research has most typically investigated the contexts of family, school, and socioeconomic status when studying children (Goswami, 2012; Lee & Yoo, 2015; Gross-Manos & Massarwi, 2022), this contribution, premised on children’s rights and their participatory perspective, emphasizes the importance of also exploring the environment and nature as contexts which shape children’s lives.
  • Pay-to-play? Belonging through consumption in commercial games
    Kamilla Knutsen Steinnes Children and adolescents are visible and connect to others through things, both tangible and intangible. That is, consumption plays an integral part in belonging. Belonging in peer groups may take place in social arenas, such as physical locations or abstract contexts – like virtual gaming platforms. Playing video games is currently the …
  • Leisure time troubles
    Markus Lynum For some, socialization, and the formation of both strong and weak ties with others seem to come around as a natural part of the life course and provide them with a sense of belonging. By having to nurture relations with family, peers and other role models in their immediate social surroundings, children may …
  • Design for Belonging: Innovation with Space, Ritual, and Roles
    Blog post by Dr. Susie Wise Belonging is a fundamental human need. We need to feel we belong in order to play together, to learn, and to work. Designing for belonging is deeply about equity. It is about ensuring that all people, especially those furthest from opportunity, have what they need to thrive. Belonging, without …
  • On the implicit policy of the term “belonging”
    author: Anita Borch In social theory, the term “belonging” refers to a sense of ease; of “fitting in” in our immediate social context – be it people, places, or materials. For most of us belonging is positive, providing us with a sense of confidence and trust in the world, triggering us to believe in ourselves …
  • The first paper of the BELONG project has been launched
    Anita Borch The first article on the BELONG project has recently been launched. It is entitled “Immigrant Children’s Connections to People and the World Around Them: A Critical Discourse Review of Academic Literature” and is published in the journal Social Inclusion. The article describes the main characteristics of highly cited research on the connections of …
  • Bli kjent med våre masterstudenter
    Fem spørsmål og svar med våre masterstudenter Luam Kebreab og Anja Elton Proskurnicki i Belong prosjektet. Hvem er du? Hva studerer/jobber du? Mitt navn er Luam Kebreab. Jeg er utdannet sosionom, og jeg tar master i sosialfag, retning barnevern nå. Jeg jobber deltid i en barnevernsinstitusjon ved siden av studiene. Hva skal du skrive masteroppgaven om? …
  • Children as experts.The Children’s Worlds Survey and its potential
    Sabine Andresen and Asher Ben-Arieh Children are experts. They have knowledge, experience and opinions, but they are often not listened to. With the help of the children’s rights approach, the scientific interest in children and their role as experts is changing. In recent years there has been a growing interest among international researchers, policy makers …
  • Using visual methodologies to explore children’s sense of belonging
    by Henry Mainsah In the Belong project we seek to explore how children negotiate a sense of belonging by looking at how they relate to places, social relationships, and things. This implies that we must map the social world of children in their material and socio-spatial contexts such as home, school, and online, and through …
  • Garderobestudier i BELONG
    Ingrid Haugsrud & Ingun Grimstad Klepp Når 9-åringen Lucy går inn i klesskapet i Narnia-bøkene finner hun et snødekt landskap og en fantastisk, men litt skummel verden. Storesøsknene tror henne først ikke når hun forteller om hva hun har oppdaget, men blir overbevist og blir med henne inn. I garderobene vi i BELONG titter inn …
  • Untangling the complex relationship between poverty and belonging using Ungdata Junior
    Christer Hyggen, Mette Løvgren A significant number of Norwegian children are growing up in families at risk of poverty. The number has been on the rise for the last two decades. As we speak about 12 percent of all Norwegian children grow up in households at risk of poverty. While poverty in Norway does not …
  • Viktigheten av tingenes «skjulte» betydning
    Mari Rysst Viktigheten av tingenes «skjulte» betydningI 2005 publiserte jeg en artikkel i Tidsskrift for Ungdomsforskning med tittel Det koster å være kul. Om tweenagers opplevelse av tilhørighet i en flerkulturell setting i Oslo. Artikkelen var basert på etnografisk feltarbeid i en bydel i Oslo øst, og diskuterer 10-årige gutter og jenters vennskapsrelasjoner med vekt …
  • BELONG på mastertorget 2022  
    Anita Borch presenterte BELONG prosjektet og muligheter for å skrive masteroppgave på OsloMets mastertorget 10. februar 2022. Det var åtte studenter som meldte sin interesse for å være knyttet til prosjektet og Anita hadde fire samtaler med fire av dem. Tema for to oppgaver er allerede bestemt. Den ene skal handle om hvordan tyverier av …
  • Ballkjolen
    Eivind Jacobsen Der henger den, innerst i skapet. Når jeg tar den ut og henger den på knaggen flommer den utover, lyseblå tyll, fotsid uten alt for mange paljetter, en prinsesse eller en Askepott verdig. Vi er på loftet, min datter flytter ut, har fått seg sitt eget sted, og mamma og pappa hjelper litt …
  • The Belong project’s impact and user groups
    “Relevance” and “impact” are two words with increasing significance for researchers around the world promoted by the European Commission to “better align science and society”. When we applied for research grants in spring 2020, we had to convince the commission evaluating our proposal that our project is relevant in the sense of addressing a grand, …
  • Kick-Off Meeting
    The BELONG project’s kick-off meeting took place on the 30th and 31st of August at OsloMet with keynotes speakers and guests attending online.The kick-off seminar started with a warm welcome from project leader Anita Borch and was followed by inspiring keynotes on the concept of belonging and children’s belonging both in Norway and on an …
  • Kort om BELONG
    Tilhørighet blant minoritets- og majoritetsbarn i lavinntektsfamilier (BELONG) Prosjektet skal studere 12-åringers tilhørighet til blant annet mennesker, steder og ting for å få kunnskap om hvorfor noen faller utenfor samfunnet i voksen alder. Et viktig mål for velferdsstaten Norge er at alle barn skal ha en trygg og god oppvekst. Studier indikerer imidlertid at andelen …